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In today's refining and petrochemical industries, sustained long term reliability is key to profitability and competitiveness. Becht has for many years been on the leading edge, based on our experience, in the development of Equipment Reliability Plans (ERP). Becht Engineering has the expertise and tools to successfully help clients with plant-wide, unit-wide, or equipment specific reliability issues. These tools include cutting-edge economic analysis programs which facilitate the development of risk-based, cost-effective, long-term maintenance strategies.

Risk-Based Equipment Reliability Planning programs are an important component of total life cycle analysis for facilities. In addition, appropriate use of risk-based decision making during the design and construction phases of a project, as well as for short term maintenance decisions (e.g. repair of a pump on an emergency basis or rely on the running spare for a few days) is also very important for integrity management. These decisions are facilitated by appropriate benefit/cost analyses that are used in all phases.

The resulting inspection and maintenance plan for each item can be tabulated and sorted both by decreasing benefit to cost ratio, and S/H/E risk levels. This allows task prioritization and enables the client to get the highest return on inspection and maintenance costs. A graphical summary of an ERP assessment sorted by decreasing benefit to cost ratio is shown below.

Critical to effective risk management is the accurate representation of failure scenarios. Becht has a team of experienced subject matter experts in all classes of rotating equipment who assist as needed in development of failure mechanisms, probability of failure and failure modes.

If an unmitigated risk is unacceptable either from an economic or S/H/E perspective, a mitigation plan is developed to reduce/manage the risk. This plan can include inspection, maintenance, or equipment upgrades, or combinations thereof. The unmitigated risk probabilities and consequences are reassessed in light of the plan and a residual risk determined. The process is continued until a plan with appropriate cost/benefit return is developed that also has acceptable S/H/E residual risk. The result of the process is an inspection and maintenance plan for each equipment item that has been optimized to address the specific damage mechanisms and failure modes that have been identified for that particular item.

Becht Fitness For Service

We are organized to quickly and efficiently handle all levels of Fitness-For-Service assessments including rapid response to emergency situations where quick assessments are required to keep a plant running or when damage is found.

For immediate response, contact our FFS coordinator, Magnus Gustafsson (click to email / phone at 571-550-0722) or complete the form. Your form request will go to Mr. Gustafsson, as well as our President, Chuck Becht and General Manager, John Basil.

A quick response is guaranteed!

Finite Element Analysis

Becht Engineering has developed a reputation as one of the premier providers of Design-By-Analysis services. We have a deep reservoir of staff that perfrom finite element analysis using commercial programs such as ABAQUS, ANSYS, SolidWorks and products of Paulin Research Group. Types of analysis include linear and nonlinear analysis, stress, heat transfer and dynamics including seismic.

Given the many analytical tools available, we are able to choose the most efficient and cost-effective tool for the task at hand; for example, we frequently use non-linear analysis to develop more efficient equipment designs and/or to demonstrate that existing equipment is fit for service. Our extensive code expertise enables us to provide authoritative interpretations of the analysis results. Our experts include such frequently published engineers as Greg Hollinger, Trevor Seipp, and Dr. Charles Becht.